“We’re watching very carefully the impact on our audience – we want to give them a better experience rather than just chasing the money.”
Welcome to the third in our series of ‘Podcast of the Week’ — an opportunity to present a handpicked selection of media podcasts we believe have key learnings for other media companies.
If you missed last week’s selection, here it is:
How publishers can make the best of TikTok: Podcast of the week
It included Gabriela Campbell Gómez (Ac2ality), Johanna Rüdiger (DW), and Erika Marzano (DW) discuss the most effective ways publishers can mark their presence on TikTok, the strategies to be used, and the importance of knowing trending TikTok songs – although if you know that Barbie World is the top trending TikTok song for this week, there’s little hope for you.
Either that or you have a young family!
TL;DR: To really understand TikTok’s unique appeal and build your community, you have to be committed, and show up every single day.
Moving on…this week’s podcast is a real gem. It features Chris Stone, Exec Producer of The New Statesman’s podcast offerings, talking about monetising podcasts. Chris has serious form – The New Statesman podcast network won “Best Commercial Podcast Strategy” at this year’s Publisher Podcast Awards, the second time in as many years.
Whilst the judges heralded the New Statesman’s podcasts as a “masterclass“, success hasn’t come easily – the New Statesman has pivoted more times than a lap dancer – but therein lies its strength. Indeed, Chris’ ability to listen to other people, be adaptable, experimental, and innovative, has paid huge dividends.
Critical timestamps:
5.40: “We’re bringing more of our content into one single feed (New Statesman podcast feed) which will increase downloads, increase available ad inventory and makes the feed more appealing to commercial partners to get involved with sponsorship.”
7.28: ”Our revenue mix is 30% platform revenue and 70% direct sold inventory (the vast majority is through branded content). The platform revenue pays our bills, but the profit opportunity is on the self-sold inventory.”
We’re watching very carefully the impact on our audience – we want to give them a better experience rather than just chasing the money.
Chris Stone, Executive Producer, New Statesman
15.04: “We offer an ad-free option via the New Statesman app and this has been reasonably successful, but you have to subscribe to get this….overall, we’re trying to provide a lot of added value to our subscriber audience.,…the users on our app have a tremendously high engagement rate.”
Listen to the entire podcast below:
